When we started, we had our own vision of sound, playability, design, packaging as well as communication with our customers. From the very start, we decided to do many things in a new and often revolutionary way. However, at the very beginning, there was one area in which we were afraid to be different, and we thought that we would have to follow the same well-established route used by our competitors.
It concerns the usual practice of extensively giving away strings to virtually everyone, particularly to teachers, gifted students, notable orchestral players, and of course, to soloists. String producers have borrowed this policy of sponsoring well-known players from sports equipment manufacturers, who even pay celebrities to endorse their products. They do it hoping that many other players will respond to the endorsement of someone they admire by purchasing these products. We do not find this strategy very fair.
The players who have a good income and don’t have a problem buying strings receive them for free. However, the production costs of the strings need to be paid for somehow. So, it is the normal players whose incomes, (let’s say generated by playing in orchestras), are not as high who end up absorbing these costs. In addition to buying strings for themselves, they also end up paying for the strings used by their more prominent colleagues. But nobody asks them whether they are happy to take part in this type of funding.
As mentioned at the beginning, we thought that it was our duty to respect this practice. So, we accommodated all requests for sample strings. But after some time, it turned out that because of this we weren't able to invest as much as we wanted to into research and development. We entered the string market to increase the quality of strings to a new level, not to repack existing products into new packaging.
Therefore, we decided to prioritise research and development instead of giving-away strings, which many call “samples”, though, in fact, it is usually more like permanent support. This approach has allowed us to bring new revolutionary solutions to the market, for example, our helix strings (Amber and Timbre E strings, and Avantgarde and Timbre A strings).
We have developed the W-core®, which boosts our strings with the warmth of gut strings and combines it with a projection that cannot be provided by any gut strings. At the same time, this new policy has allowed us to maintain the prices of our top products at a reasonable level for everybody.
In the end, the change in our giveaway policy has brought our customers much more than it would have done by just giving away free sample strings. The feedback that we receive daily from you confirms to us that it makes sense to give you extra quality instead of free samples.
Of course, being a violinist myself, I know that finding the ideal strings for a particular instrument sometimes requires some experimenting, and that premium quality strings are far from cheap these days. This is the reason why we have decided to replace the giveaway practice with what we call “Trial Purchase” in our corporate e-shop. As a registered user, you can purchase any of our sets for the first time at half their usual cost. You won’t be paying us for marketing. On the contrary, you will contribute to our development of new products, and for your money, you will enjoy an ever-increasing range of quality strings.
Bohdan Warchal